Area-minimizing Riemann surfaces on the Iwasawa manifold (Q1589345)

The complex Iwasawa manifold \(I_{3}\) is the quotient of the nilpotent group \(G\) of upper triangular unipotent complex matrices by the cocompact lattice \(G\cap GL(3,\mathbb Z[i])\). Since \(G\) is non-abelian, \(I_{3}\) is not Kähler, but it is balanced in the sense that \(d^{2}\omega=0\) for the fundamental form \(\omega\) of the natural Hermitian metric on \(I_{3}\). The author is interested in area-minimizing elements of homology classes that contain holomorphic cycles. Let \(\|T\|\) denote the mass of a normal current with respect to the above metric and for \(\alpha\in H_{2p}(I_{3},\mathbb Z)\subset H_{2p}(I_{3},\mathbb R)\) define \(\|\alpha\|\) resp. \(\|\alpha\|_{\mathbb Z}\) to be the infimum of \(\|T\|\) with \(T\in \alpha\) resp. \(T\in\alpha\) and \(T\) integral. The mass \(\|T\|\) coincides with the area of \(T\) if \(T\) is an oriented submanifold of \(I_{3}\). The main result is as follows: If \(\alpha\in H_{2p}(I_{3},\mathbb Z)\) contains a positive normal \((p,p)\)-current and \(\|\alpha\|_{\mathbb Z}=\|\alpha\|\), then there exists an effective holomorphic cycle \(S\in\alpha\) such that \(\|S\|=\|\alpha\|\). The special structure of \(I_{3}\) as a homogeneous holomorphic principal bundle over its two-dimensional Albanese torus \(\mathbb C^{2}/(\mathbb Z[i]\times\mathbb Z[i])\) with fibre a (\(0\)-homologous) elliptic curve leads to some other interesting phenomena, e.g. there is a complex curve \(C\in\alpha\in H_{2}(I_{3},\mathbb Z)\) with area (\(C\))\(\leq \|\widetilde{C}\|\) for every holomorphic cycle \(\widetilde{C}\) homologous to \(C\), but area(\(C\))\(>\|\alpha\|_{\mathbb Z}>\|\alpha\|\).